COLUMN: Maiden speech in the House of Commons

John Milne MP speaking in the House of Commons

By John Milne MP as printed in the Thursday, 17 October 2024, print edition of the West Sussex County Times.

This past week in the House I had the honour of making my Maiden Speech. New MPs are expected to use their first speech to say a little about themselves and their constituency, and from then on they are able to contribute to any debate. With so many new MPs this time round I’ve had to wait my turn for a slot.

I began by thanking Sir Jeremy Quin for his 10 years’ work in Horsham constituency. In real life, the House is much noisier than it seems on TV and I was struck by the warm swell of approval from the Conservative benches in response. Clearly, Sir Jeremy remains a popular figure among his colleagues. 

In my speech I took the opportunity to promote Horsham as a great place to live and do business. I also highlighted the competing demands made be housing, farming, renewable energy and rewilding. Endless development without new services has been a major issue locally.

While I support Labour ambitions to get to grips with the chronic shortage of affordable housing, I’m disappointed to see that the new government has simply adopted the same flawed method for deciding local targets.

Targets will continue to be fixed by a rigid mathematical formula known as the Standard Method, just as it was under the Conservatives. This is an ill-conceived system which has been shown many times to throw up damaging results. 

Under the old Conservative plan, Horsham’s target would have risen to circa 1200pa. Labour now threaten an increase in that to 1500pa. Fortunately Horsham’s new Local Plan, which I previously worked on in my district councillor role, will set a target of just 480pa for the next 5 years. It’s essential this is allowed to complete its approval process because the alternative is certain to be a far higher target, requiring more sites to be developed.

The fundamental problem of how to make these new houses genuinely affordable has still not been addressed. Although Labour talks about infrastructure, in practise they seem to be talking about national needs, not local schools, clinics and shops. This is not the solution we were looking for!